I Don't Understand It
by M.L. Shards
Summary: Our favorite doctor of archeology thinks about the strange ranger who lately seems to always be just one step ahead of him in the search for mystical artifacts... OneShot


I don't own PRO... I wish I did...I own an action figure, does that count???

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I've been looking for the Corona Aurora for what feels like ages. I've been looking for the stones that go with it. And every time I think I've come close to the site where they are, just when I'm about to go to their resting place…

He's there.

I thought it was a coincidence, surely the same man cannot be at the bottom of an ocean, inside deep dark caves, around volcanoes, and in every single part of the world at the same time I am, at the exact same place only two steps ahead of me…

But he is.

And he always gets there first. It's enough to give a guy a complex.

I travel and I search and all I get in return is too see him pluck the artifacts out of my hands, or discover it's not there, or discover something else. I can never see his face…

But he's always there.

Sometimes he's with others like him, but more often than not he's just by himself, using a black light, tracker thing that he carries with him to see things and find things more efficiently than me. Once or twice I've been to a site only to discover that people claim to have seen him. That he was there days before me…

He must have an army of people working for him. No one can be that good without help.

I have nothing against this stranger, in fact I feel almost like I know him. The body language, the way I can hear him singing to himself when there isn't a booby trap of some sort, that the excavation is simply that; a boring excavation…the voice sounds so familiar, but I can't place it. Maybe he's well known and I've seen him on TV.

Some sort of accent, almost with an Australian undertone that seems to show up at the most random points when he speaks or sings.

I don't know his name or face.

But he's always there!

I am trying to keep the artifacts out of the wrong hands…and it's not like I haven't done that before in my work, but each time I'm beaten to it only to see him celebrating after, or running steps ahead of him to get out of the way of something he's set off. To get away from the strange henchmen who seem to be after the jewels and crown as well. He always gets away, perfectly unharmed, then smiles and laughs with his friends in celebration.

Almost as if he doesn't need me.

Well, technically they...

Not the point.

I don't know who he is. I don't know what is going on or what he plans on doing with the artifacts he's uncovered. I did manage to find one in a museum not that long ago though, so at least he's not ruining them.

The last time I saw him, was about two weeks ago.

I was in Africa, in a deep dark cave that I nearly broke my neck in twice due to the uneven ground. My flashlight barely made any progress in lighting any other part of the room except the ground in front of me. I thought there was no way he'd be able to see in here, that I **had **to be first this time.

But then I saw it.

A bright light at the end of the cave…fluorescent even…

I ducked behind a rock formation wondering who it could possibly be, but knowing in my heart that it had to be him. It had to be, since all the other million times it had been, why not this time?

I smacked my knee into the rock and let out a small hiss of pain.

The light was suddenly directed in my direction, and squinting I realized something I hadn't realized before…The light was a headlight, a very bright headlight built into his helmet. Of course it had to be really bright so he could see through the tint of the visor, but I had never noticed it was built into his helmet.

A pang of nostalgia went through me as one thought sprang to mind.

T.J.

But anyone could see it wasn't a turbo ranger standing in the dark cave in front of me. It was someone completely different.

It was him!

"Hello?" he asked looking around the cave.

I kept silent as the light flooded the cave illuminating it. His back had been facing me so I hadn't noticed how bright the light was and how much of the cave it lit up. I felt a pang of jealously. My adventuring stuff had never been that high-tech or helpful. Where did he get it?

I heard his boots scrape against the ground as he walked to look around a bit better.

He sounded young, probably a teenager, that's the average age.

I saw the light come in my direction and I ducked down farther as the light passed over me and lit up the cave wall, jagged rocks and all. It amazed me he was in here, his mainly white suit clean and free of tares from the rocks. I managed to ruin one of my favorite jackets…

After a few minutes he went back to decoding the puzzle on the cave wall and I left.

He was already there. There with his tracker thing, bathing the cave in fluorescent and black light as he worked to figure out the key to unlocking the guards that had been put in place to protect the artifact years and years prior.

I felt disappointed, I at least wanted to see the face of the man who kept outdoing me in speed and puzzle solving, even if he was only beating me by minutes and had active ranger powers. I just wanted to know…to see…

But I just left, reported back that it was gone already…and it might as well have been.

It doesn't feel like two weeks ago. It feels like it just happened.

I have met my archeological-adventurer match…

I don't know who he is.

But he's always there.

And it makes me feel a bit better… a bit safer than I had before.

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